A Simple Way Out of Your Precarious Freelance Income Problem

Freelancing. That’s the life, isn’t it? Total control. Total freedom. Abject terror.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot to be said for the freelance life. You’re in charge of your own time. You pick and choose the projects you’ll take on. You select your clients.

When it’s all working the way it’s supposed to, that is.

When you’re not breaking into a sweat as you open your checking account statement. When you’re not wondering how you’ll pay next month’s rent. When you’re not thinking, “Maybe a job with a salary wouldn’t be so bad …”

There’s a simple solution, though. One that will restore a feeling of stability to your freelance life.

It’s nothing you haven’t heard before. But you may not realize how important this solution can be for your freelance business. You may not be taking full advantage of the peace of mind and regular income it can provide.

Let’s get it working for you.

How to build an income foundation for your business

The solution to a freelancer’s unstable income problem is to take on a handful of retainer clients. Retainer clients pay you a set amount every month, and they provide a steady income you can count on. There are several ways to negotiate a retainer agreement, and we’ll cover them in this article.

For a freelancer, retainer clients are the closest thing to the stable income a salary provides.

The reliable income retainer clients provide is great, but if you don’t specify exactly what their retainer payments cover, you may find yourself selling your time for cheaper than you should.

Here’s what to aim for and what to avoid.

Why retainers rock (and why they sometimes suck)

Retainer clients have massive advantages:

• They provide a set income you can count on.
• You don’t have to spend as much time in the networking-prospecting-qualifying-selling cycle.
• Admin tasks are reduced because they’re predictable.

And there are some important retainer client minefields you should be aware of:

• You are “stuck” with your retainer clients: they’ve bought your time and you have to deliver on whatever they ask you to do (like it or not).
• Your projects may suffer from scope creep: clients feel a sense of ownership toward your time and may try to sneak in a few extra tasks here and there.

One way to minimize the risk associated with beginning a retainer relationship with a new client is to do a few “test projects” to see how you like working with them. These test projects would be one-off jobs you bid on, complete, and invoice individually.

As you work with the client, ask yourself:

• Is this client clear about her expectations?
• Does she understand the value my work contributes to her project?
• Is she easy to communicate with? Does she return my calls or emails?
• Does she pay on time?

Treat these one-off projects as a vetting process you’re putting the client through. When you find those client “gems” who are easy to work with, appreciate your contributions, and have ongoing projects, think about moving them to a retainer relationship.

How to protect your time, energy, and income with retainer clients

There are two primary ways to structure a retainer relationship.

The “Reserve Your Time” Retainer

• You’re paid a set amount for a specified number of hours that you reserve for that client every month.
• To make this attractive, you can offer your hours at a savings (but you don’t have to).
• Hours aren’t carried over to a new month: the client starts with a fresh chunk of your time each month.

Clients with ongoing needs like content creation, website maintenance, or social media management can be ideal for this type of retainer arrangement. You — the freelancer — need to find a way to carefully track the time you spend on the client’s work.

A note of caution: Be careful not to overbook your time. If you have several retainer clients who reserve your time and don’t use it fully, you may be tempted to book an extra client since you “always have time left over.” But if all your clients show up with heavy loads of work at the same time, you may find you don’t have the bandwidth to meet your commitments to them.

Solve this issue by either not overbooking your time or having a stable of reliable freelancer colleagues you can outsource the extra work to.

The “Handle These Ongoing Projects” Retainer

• Writers or professional content strategists can provide a set amount of content each month: for example, four blog posts, two email newsletters, two emails added to an autoresponder series.
• Designers may commit to handling specific ongoing design needs: website graphics, print material design, social media graphics.

Some freelancers prefer to handle specific projects and take their clients “off the clock.” This can be freeing: if you are able to get their project done in less time, all the time you save is your own.

This type of retainer relationship works best when you really know the client, their working style, and the projects they give you. When you can predict how much time it will take you to do their work consistently, you can take them off the clock and focus on delivering a result for a set fee.

2 easy ways to make retainer proposals irresistible

One easy way to make a retainer proposal extra attractive is to guarantee a set amount of time for a lower-than-usual hourly rate. The lower rate is only available if the client purchases the full block of your time for the month. And remember, hours don’t carry over from one month to the next.

For example:

Your normal hourly rate is $125/hour. Your retainer client asks for 20 hours/month of your time. Twenty hours of your time would normally be $2,500. For clients who pay you on a retainer basis, you can sell this time for $2,000, effectively reducing your hourly rate to $100/hour.

To protect yourself, ask the client to commit to a set period of time for the retainer relationship — perhaps six months. That will help you avoid clients who view your offer as a way to get one month’s worth of work for less.

Another way to make retainer agreements attractive is to bill on a quarterly — or even annual — basis.

I once had a client who had to jump through all sorts of administrative hoops when a vendor’s invoice was submitted. I suggested billing my retainer once per quarter so he’d only have to request four checks a year rather than twelve. He was thrilled, and it saved me administrative time, too.

Freelance writers: we have something just for you

Inside our Content Marketer Certification program, we’ve got a lot more for writers.

We designed this program to help writers make the most of their careers — to help them position themselves and their offerings, so that they can build profitable freelance writing businesses.

And we’re opening the program soon. Drop your email address below and you’ll be the first to hear about it.

Find out when our Certified Content Marketer training program reopens:

Share your retainer tips in the comments

If you have structured your freelance business to use retainers, please visit the comments below. I want to hear about:

• How you first proposed a retainer
• Both the positive and negative aspects of retainer clients
• Whether you still use retainers today

Let’s talk! Scroll down and share your thoughts.

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3 Tips for Creating Your Own Independence Day

July 4 is Independence Day here in the States, which, for most of us, entails the risk of losing:

• Your fingers to cheap fireworks
• Your waistline to hot dogs
• Your liver

All of which, as a red-blooded American, I support wholeheartedly. But if you’re spending today celebrating the country’s independence, how about giving some attention to your own personal independence?

It might be independence from a day job, financial stress, or even a mindset that’s keeping you from making things happen.

Here are three of my favorite tips for declaring your own individual independence.

1. Expand your audience

Andy Warhol had it wrong. Now that we’re living in the future, everyone isn’t famous for 15 minutes. We’re each famous with 15 people.

Each of us has our own village of customers. And most of us would like to expand that village, at least by a little bit. Especially if we want to build a business around it.

So, what’s the secret to finding a wider audience?

Put more thought into what your village of customers wants and needs.

Sure, personal expression can be a good thing. But never forget the other side of that computer screen.

There’s something you can offer your audience that will fulfill their fondest desire or solve their most pressing problem. Think a little more about them and a little less about yourself.

2. Create a revenue stream

For most of us, freedom and independence tend to boil down to having enough money coming in the door.

It’s a lot easier to say goodbye to your nightmare boss or your crummy living situation when you’ve got some steady income rolling in. And there are improvements you can make or simple products you can build in the next six week to bring in more revenue.

If you have a service business, you could learn a smarter way to set your prices. Or, you may decide to build a membership site or create an online course.

The hardest part is getting started. You can start small and once you’re up and running, you can tweak and expand your offering to make it better and bring in more income.

Don’t let perfectionism slow you down. There’s no better way to see what works than taking action.

3. Never stop learning

In today’s economic and technical environment, the moment you stop learning, you’re roadkill.

It’s not always about learning the latest and greatest. Sometimes it’s taking the classic works in your field and translating them for a new audience. Sometimes it’s about making a completely new connection. It’s about staying curious and keeping your mental playfulness.

If you never add anything new to your intellectual mix, your content is going to suffer. (If for no other reason than you’ll develop a serious case of writer’s block.)

Spend a little less time on the trivial stuff (I love Twitter too, but no one needs to be there five hours a day) and a little more time educating yourself.

Knowledge is your greatest asset. It can’t be stolen or confiscated. It sets your intellect free. And when your mind is free, the rest of it is just a bunch of beautiful fireworks.

Editor’s note: The original version of this post was published on July 3, 2009.

Image courtesy Hugh MacLeod.

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5 Things to Know About Today’s SaaS Customer

Today’s SaaS customers are savvy.

Old marketing tactics don’t excite them. And features disguised as benefits are easily recognized.

As technology evolves, consumer behavior changes as well. Buyers expect quality products backed by efficient service.

This is an opportunity for your business to experiment with new strategies and cater to customers differently.

“As marketers, it’s essential to pay attention to consumer behavior and to be creative within the constraints of each marketing channel we use,” states Ash Read, content crafter at Buffer.

Start selling like it’s 2016, not 1916. Here are five things you should know about today’s customer.

1. They Research First

Adweek reports that “81% of shoppers conduct online research before buying.” With access to more information than previous generations, consumers are taking the time to do their homework.

Customers want to know if your product is actually worth their money and time. And to gain that insight, they look for reviews.

Products reviews are vital in online shopping. They offer an honest perspective from a current customer’s experience.

Take advantage of this trend. Post reviews from customers on your product pages. Consider creating case studies to showcase how customers benefited from your services.

Unbounce offers their prospective buyers a collection of case studies. Below is a snapshot from the website:

“Businesses that want to generate leads online should focus on making their websites a top destination for information with custom content. People use search engines and social channels to learn about items before purchasing, whether they’re shopping for themselves or their businesses,” states Lauren Kaye, marketing editor at Brafton Inc.

And potential buyers aren’t just interested in learning about your product. They want to learn about your whole brand.

How are you treating your SaaS employees? Do you use locally sourced suppliers? Are you donating to charities on an annual basis?

Your brand’s overall image is important to buyers. So, make your company’s information readily available.

2. They Desire Quality

Quality, results-driven products will always outweigh more features. People want reassurance that your services will do more good than harm.

Customers possess explicit and implicit performance expectations. That includes anything from specific product features to service benefits.

For example, if your software experiences an outage, will the problem be solved in a few hours? And do your offer 24/7 customer service?

Quality is a win-win situation. Consumers receive what they desire. And your business has the opportunity to charge customers more.

“Customers desire the best product and service quality and are willing to pay a premium for it. High reliability is assumed,” says Ken Dooley, founder of Madison Productions.

For quality to exist, your entire team must be on the same page. Inform employees on how their actions impact the customer.

“Transparency on quality measures helps create buy-in on quality management and enables employees to understand what role quality plays in how they do work, how they can impact quality, and its effects on their customers’ satisfaction. Transparency breeds accountability at the most basic level…”, writes Holly Lyke-Ho-Gland, research program manager at APQC.

Quality is dependent on the customer’s perception. Figure out what they want. Then, work with your team to create a transparent strategy.

3. They Demand Speed

SaaS customers want solutions to their problems today, not tomorrow. With next day shipping and one-click subscriptions, buyers consider speed a minimum standard.

This benchmark holds true for customer service. And buyers are accustomed to using fast communication tools.

“Today’s customers are media agnostic, having grown up using the phone, email, Web chat, IM, and social media interchangeably. They are comfortable, and may even prefer, communicating online versus face to face or over the phone,” writes Laura Bassett, director of marketing at Avaya.

Some businesses consider speed a downfall. But your customers may think differently.

Zendesk found that “69% of participants associated their good customer service experience with the quick resolution of their issue.”

To encourage speedy response times, Facebook also offers brands an opportunity to earn a page responsiveness badge. Companies that respond to 90% of their received messages within five minutes get the designation.

But offering fast service isn’t a new strategy. Innovative businesses have always strived to perform better.

“Forward thinking companies realized how much customers hated being on hold while waiting for a service rep that they invested in technology that would automatically call a customer back when it was their turn,” states Shep Hyken, a customer service expert.

So, start responding to your customers’ questions in a timely fashion.

4. They Prefer Consistency

Trust is the foundation of all relationships. The same is true between your company and customers. Buyers want to know that your website won’t disappear after they swipe their credit cards.

Plus, consistency eliminates brand confusion. And builds upon your previous success.

“By maintaining the same branding across all your resources – both online and offline – your customers will be able to recognise you much faster and will, hopefully, start to show loyalty to your brand,” says Kelly Haggard Olson, creative content strategist at Blue Zoo Creative.

Research shows that “45% of a brand’s image can be attributed to what it says and how it says it.” Consumers prefer a consistent brand experience, whether talking to a salesperson or shopping on your website.

Beth Pop Nikolov, content strategist for Venveo, offers a good analogy:

“When you’re getting to know a person, you start to develop opinions, ideas and assumptions about them based on your interactions. If they are dressed in a business suit one day, bermuda shorts and a ratty T-shirt the next and then a scuba diving suit another time, it may be hard to nail down exactly who they are and what they are all about.”

Align your marketing and sales team to ensure the same messaging is communicated to consumers. Talk with your customer service reps to streamline quality across all channels, including live chat and email.

Give your customers the trust they deserve. Be consistent.

5. They Seek Novelty

Boring isn’t cool anymore (and it never was). SaaS consumers want one-of-a-kind experiences to share with their colleagues.

Adding novelty to your marketing mix demonstrates creativity. It sparks customers’ interests and gets them to pay closer attention to your brand.

Sid Bharath, a entrepreneur and growth hacker, states, “We all want new experiences. We want to see new places, meet new people, and use new products. So don’t stop creating something new. Create new products, create new features, create new content, and give your customers new experiences.”

Build originality directly into your company. For instance, how can you enhance your loyalty program?

Coffee maker Nespresso entices their loyal customers with personalized orders, delivery, recycling and customer-service options.

“Put a smile on their face and in their heart. You can do something special for their child, their parent, their pet. Make them laugh, thank them in a showy way for a major purchase, have a contest or a drawing for something fun that they could share with family and friends,” says Sydney Biddle Barrows, New York-based business consultant.

Go the extra mile. Surprise your customers with your latest product or a free trip to your next conference. Give them an experience worth sharing with others.

Know Your Customer

Customers are smart. They aren’t fooled by false promotions or useless features.

Learn how to meet your customers’ needs. Make product information readily available. Offer quality that can’t be found elsewhere. And give them a unique experience.

Be in the now. Know your SaaS customer.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

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4 Simple Tips for Making the Most of Your Marketing Budget

As every senior marketer knows, it’s essential to squeeze every last drop of value from your marketing budget. With boardroom expectations high, you need to be able to not only get maximum results supported by data, but also by customer experiences.

Follow these actionable tips, taken from the Marketing Budgets 2016 report (Oracle Marketing Cloud, Econsultancy) to get maximum bang for your marketing buck...

1. Introduce Consumer Numbers into the Boardroom

Financial data is clearly important, but do you ever get the feeling that customer experience is being neglected at board level? If the conversation is only about financial stats, you need to make a change.

Great experiences lead to great finances. Or to put it another way: if you aren’t measuring and managing your customer experience, your financial performance is sure to suffer sooner or later.

We’re not focused on the numbers. We’re focused on the things that produce the numbers.

- Tim Cook, CEO of Apple

Senior marketers must insist on board level measurement and management of:

• Consumer activity
• Consumer sentiment
• Consumer satisfaction

Remember: What gets measured, gets managed!

2. Optimise Impact, Forget Format

Guess what? Traditional marketing isn’t quite so dead after all. Despite the much-vaunted social media revolution and the move to digital, consumers are still present on non-digital platforms.

New media coexists with broadcast and even print; consumers move seamlessly across channels depending on activity, time of day and many other factors. Often they engage with both simultaneously (ever browsed Facebook while watching TV?).

Marketers should stop thinking ‘traditional vs digital’ and instead allocate marketing spend according to the purpose of the interaction and the desired impact. These will guide the formats you choose.

3. Embrace Experimentation

Marketers should be free to experiment with new formats and the way existing channels are used.

- Marketing Budgets 2016 (Oracle, Econsultancy)

Consumer behaviour is changing rapidly all the time. To have any hope of keeping up, marketers must embrace and implement a culture of innovation and experimentation.

If you fall behind your prospective or existing customers, you’re in trouble. But on the flip side, experimenting and innovating your way ahead of competitors can leave you in a stronger and more lucrative position.

How to make experimentation part of the culture:

• Dedicate a budget for experimentation
• Praise and reward innovation in team members
• Demonstrate value of experimentation in improved financial performance
• Incentivise new ways of reaching goals
• Get the board on board—you need buy-in at all levels

4. Prioritise Validated Learning

Data removes the need to assume. It gives marketers power to extract powerful insights and apply those to assign and spend budget in the most intelligent way. Don’t roll out large, expensive programmes before they’re proven—test and measure first.

We now have the ability to get data on all our different marketing activities. You can test assumptions about your brand, products, customer understanding and consumer preferences more easily and effectively than ever before.

The resulting insights can apply beyond individual marketing campaigns. Data can feed into brand, product and even organisational developments. Knowledge is power—why not use it to improve performance on all fronts?

If the adage "what gets measured, gets managed" is true, and improving the customer experience is truly a priority throughout the company, then measuring, reporting and analysing this at the board level is a must.

- Marketing Budgets 2016 (Oracle Marketing Cloud, Econsultancy)

Main Takeaways

• Don’t lose sight of customer experience—this needs to be measured at board level, just like financials
• Optimise impact, forget format: choose media based on what you want to achieve, not on a ‘traditional vs new media’ split
• Building in experimentation and innovation can be a secret weapon to get you ahead

Find out how marketing budgets are evolving, and what you need to do to get optimum results from yours. Download Marketing Budgets 2016, part of the Modern Marketing Actionable Insights Series, now.

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Rainmaker Rewind: From Infoproducts to Software Rockstar, with ConvertKit’s Nathan Barry

This week on Rainmaker Rewind, Chris Ducker welcomes Nathan Barry of ConvertKit to Youpreneur.

Nathan and Chris dive into the story behind ConvertKit and the fundamentals of email service providers.

And, as always, be sure to check out the other great episodes that recently aired on Rainmaker FM.

1. Youpreneur. Chris Ducker and Nathan Barry talk about the fundamental and powerful features of email service providers: From Infoproducts to Software Rockstar, with ConvertKit’s Nathan Barry
2. The Digital Entrepreneur. Brian Clark, Chris Garrett, and Jerod Morris revisit the perennial importance of email marketing and why what you’re doing probably isn’t enough: Is Your Email Marketing Leaving Money on the Table?
3. Copyblogger FM. Sonia Simone explores the one, big reason why customers often turn away from offers at the last minute: How to Break Past the #1 Conversion Killer
4. The Writer Files. Kelton Reid wraps up part two of his interview with publishing consultant and writer Jane Friedman: How Publishing Consultant, Educator, and Author Jane Friedman Writes: Part Two
5. The Missing Link. Jabez LeBret welcomes John Nemo to the show to address LinkedIn privacy concerns: How to Stay Safe On LinkedIn (and Have Fun While You’re At It)
6. The Showrunner. Jerod Morris and Jon Nastor discuss the reason why an email list is so important and how you can get your listeners to subscribe: [Rebroadcast] Next-Level Tips for Building Your Show’s Email List
7. Confessions of a Pink-haired Marketer. Sonia Simone shares her opinions on the “abundance mindset” vs. wishing really hard: The Difference Between Mindset and Wishful Thinking

And, one more thing …

If you want to get Rainmaker Rewind sent straight to your favorite podcast player, subscribe right here on Rainmaker FM.

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What are the 5 Most Important Lessons in Indie Business? (FS169)

Listen, there’s so much shit out there you need to learn. So many tips and tricks and “best practices” to start using in your blog, podcast or business of any kind.

So today we wanted to try to cut through the smog and prioritize the biggest, baddest, most important things you should know.

This list isn’t everything, but each item is essential if your business is going to succeed.

Barrett Brooks has been working closely with indie entrepreneurs for the past 2 years. Long enough to see the patterns, not so long that he’s withered up inside.

Today on the show (and in the text below) he shares the 5 lessons he feels are most important to entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes.

Whether you’re a blogger, podcaster, freelancer or maker, these are 5 areas that can bring substance to your business, helping it get off the ground safely AND last through the years.

It’s a bittersweet episode for us at Fizzle as Barrett is moving on to the next stage in his career. He shares all the details in the episode (if you’re looking for a business coach you’ll definitely want to listen in).

We’ve loved having Barrett on the team. His voice has been a huge help to listeners over the last hundred episodes or so, and his ideas have helped shape what Fizzle is today.

OK, more on all of that in the episode for today, and below I break out each of the lessons with the transcript from the show so you can read instead of listen.

It’s better to listen on the go!    Subscribe on iTunes 

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Quit learning everything. Here’s Barrett’s 5 most important things to know in your business.
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I asked Barrett in his last episode to bring a list of the five most important lessons are from his personal experience (or the five mistakes that drive him crazy).

Here they are:

1. Money is the key to making businesses work (also, a very touchy subject). (7:30 in the episode) Lots to explore in this one.

Barrett: It was a good question actually. It made me think really hard about how do you distill really what we’ve all learned I think. Two years of work, how do you put it into a few bullet points, but one of the first ones that came up was when you’re talking, maybe to anyone, but definitely to any entrepreneur, money is the most touchy of topics. You draw a line in the sand on money. I don’t remember what we did, but at some point, we suggested a line in the sand on the money thing. It was like if you’re above this amount you’re X or something like that.

Corbett: It was pre road map. We were talking about how to define some milestones that every Fizzler would to through. We’re thinking, what milestones are common to every kind of business? One of the only things we could come up with was revenue. Boy, that set of a firestorm.

Barrett: I don’t know if I ever witnessed a firestorm quite as big as that one in response.

Chase: I’m not remembering this firestorm.

Barrett: It was crazy. The forums went wild for a little while.

Chase: Oh, is it mostly in the forums?

Corbett: Yeah, emails, forums. People were just going nuts.

Barrett: That was fascinating. I just found it so interesting, but the flip side of that is, the gist, true fact is that money is the key to making a business work. I know, Chase, over the past two years, we’ve all evolved on how we think about money for the Fizzle business and how that allows us to do different things and have more resources to pour into the business. You always came up with this interesting point on money that was just like money is the thing that keeps the wheels turning.

Corbett: Yeah and what allows the business to keep working. That’s one of my biggest lessons for sure. It was one that I learned first hand too, but then seeing it across so many people’s businesses, it’s just hard. When your business isn’t making money and there’s not a good sure fire path to getting there or at least a clear plan to try, man, people wallow. They can wallow for a long time and it can be really difficult on them.

Chase: I remember looking at, because I was always doing designs of stuff, I remember several years back looking at, when I would do designs, I always look and do a bunch of research on the audience like who are these people and trying to get in their head space. That was something that I geeked out about a lot, even before being at Fizzle. I remember coming across a Seth Goden post about “here are 10 questions asked by your audience” or something like that. One of them was, how do they think about money? What’s their relationship to money?

Corbett: In terms of building a customer profile.

Chase: Yeah, exactly. People to design the site for, people to design the product for or the business around. I feel like that’s such an interesting question. It always makes me do a double take or think more about the person or the group of people than I was previously. Do you know what I mean? I can make a lot of assumptions and then you ask me, “What’s the relationship to money,” and I’m like, “Hmm. I wonder.” There’s a lot of ways that we can relate to money.

Corbett: To be fair, we have customers who are all over spectrum. There are some people who really uncomfortable with it, others who are very comfortable and some who are earning a lot because they really focus on it. I think the thing that really came up was people didn’t want to be identified by how much revenue they made because in some cases it was because I think some people feel they’re actually playing a business instead of building a business and they like to feel like they’re further along than they are. When you rub their face in it, it’s like, “No, actually you’re not earning any revenue.” At the same time, they just didn’t want to put these barriers between people because some folks have really great life experiences, even good advice, even though their business might not be as far along. It was a touchy subject. Ultimately, we backed off of using revenue as a differentiator, but it is baked into the road map. It’s just there aren’t hard numbers.

Chase: Now it’s customizable. We have the minimum viable income.

Barrett: I think that was a productive way to come out of that conversation and saying, “Okay, we acknowledge it’s personal for every individual. It’s personal how much money you need to make from your business. Maybe you just want a thousand dollars a month or maybe you want to replace your fulltime job.” You need to define that. Instead of projecting on to people, “This is the number you need to make,” we just said, “Define it for yourself,” and then build that into your plan. I really appreciate that we took that approach because I think it really brought … It’s so easy, especially when you’re talking about the audience first approach that we always talk about in building a business, it’s easy to get caught up in that hamster wheel and never get off it until you actually turn it into a money making business. I think we shifted that focus and said, “Okay, you got to have an exit ramp from the hamster wheel at some point and really turn it into an income generating thing.”

Chase: I think this idea of money is something that I have definitely … In my partnership with you, Corbett, and I think definitely bringing you onto the team, Barrett, we’ve focused a lot more on just our revenue because now you guys have got to buddy up and just go sack up in some, I don’t know, in some cabin and talk about numbers and revenue and all those things.

Corbett: Spreadsheets and …

Chase: Corbett, I just saw him just scratching his neck and getting really into it. Everything is getting hot and heavy. I was never able to touch him there basically. In watching you guys, I’ve learned a lot more about … because I’m the stereotypical creative who doesn’t want to have to think about money because it sounds like pressure. It feels like pressure. It makes me less creative.

Corbett: There’s some weird thing that creatives have about they feel like they’re losing street credit if they’re making money or something.

Chase: Totally. Exactly. What I’ve come to realize is that that’s just misinformation. That is just you’re privileged enough to live in a world where you don’t have to make it all about money. There’s this balance of I want people to do both. I want them to do 100% of both. To be uber creative. Totally playful. Totally doing things that have no consequence but that might end up being big and totally safe on the revenue side. I want 100% of both. I have always felt like it’s a dichotomy. You have to pick one or the other, but it is a false dichotomy. Especially for me, being a creative and a lot of people like me it’s like, we get paid more and we’re more desirable when we’re more playful, more crazy, more this, that and the other. It’s this weird mix that’s always been like, “I think I’ll make more or I’ll earn more if I don’t think about it at all and I just follow my bliss,” for lack of a better term, but there’s so much intelligence to bring to it and so much of awareness, a kind of consciousness to bring to it that I learned over the least four years, but especially the last two, as we’ve figured out MVI, minimum viable income, and then when we started teaching on that and doing more about it and having more conversations with people.

I was like, “This is a powerful …” That’s something, Barrett, you brought in definitely. You were like, “I did the business and money was what we needed.” Do you know what I mean? That’s what we needed and didn’t have coming in, revenue. You always made it a point to go like … Corbett, you’re always … from 100 years ago, back when you were still president of the United States Abraham Lincoln, you …

Corbett: I was after Lincoln.

Chase: You were after Lincoln. You were always like, “Blog is not a business,” because you saw how many people just go, “I’ve got a blog now so I guess I’m in business.” It’s like there’s no forethought, there’s no understanding of your value proposition of who you’re selling to and what you’re going to help them with and your product or whatever. Anyways, this idea of money being important is actually really interesting and a good first point here.

Corbett: Last thing I’ll say on it is if you get that out of the way up front, if you’ve developed that understanding, and we have with our audience at this point, we just put it right there in front of them and say, “This is the thing you’re going to have to think about,” and then you can talk about the creative stuff and you can talk about the fun parts of business and how you get there, but you got to get that baseline down. That was the first one.

Chase: I love it.

Corbett: The second one I’ve talked a lot about over the podcast, I was trying to figure out how many podcast episodes we did together once I joined. It’s got to be 75 or something.

Chase: Yeah, we could figure that out. Maybe one of our astute listeners can go find it. That’d be awesome.

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2. Expertise is a superpower. What a difference it makes to start a business when you already have your skill set in tact. (15:15)

Barrett: If you want to, go for it. One thing I think I brought up a lot though was this super power that I found in the customer interviews that I did over time of expertise and how cool it was when somebody came to the table to start a business and they had spent 10 years building a skill set. Man. I’m not saying you can’t build a business without it, but some of those people who showed up day one with 15 years having done whatever or 5 years even doing Facebook ads or in the newspaper business or teaching in the classroom or being a chef or whatever …

Chase: Or play an instrument.

Barrett: Yes, exactly. Those skills can become such cool businesses. Seeing those people thrive as business people made me realize that if you put in the hard work, the thing that you’re always talking about, the thing that nobody wants to do is go put in all the years of effort to be good at something. You show up like that and then the business part is fun because I won’t say it’s formulaic, but when you’ve got a thing that people want, a skill that people want and you can teach it or you can share it with others, man, that’s a powerful business asset.

Corbett: Totally.

Chase: Thinking about a lot of our biggest success stories, a lot of those people started out with some major expertise, photography or play an instrument or having design skills or whatever and whenever someone struggles for a long time, especially in the beginning when they’re having a hard time nailing down what’s my topic, who’s my audience, what am I going to build this business on, it’s because there isn’t a clear cut thing to go after. Not only do they have to figure out how to build a business, but they have to figure out how to gain all the skills that’s going to take to build the business including the substance of the business itself. You have enough skills that you have to learn anyway from marketing to sales to hiring to content creation and all that, but then in addition to that, having to figure out whatever the thing is that you’re going to teach or create or sell, that’s a hard row.

Chase: That expertise thing is tough because so many people right now are finding Pat Flynn or someone else and going, “Yeah, I want to do a blog. I want to try my hand at passive income. I don’t like my job. I want to do this.” Probably a lot of people listening to the show just go, “Yeah, I want to do something like that. I just don’t know what yet.” They are oftentimes younger or older. You know what I mean? And thinking about an idea that is not what their career has been to date. It’s such a painful or not painful, it just can be such a … The truth is … In fact, I’m doing a video right now that speaks to this and it’ll be out when this podcast is out, this idea of if we think … There’s two ways of doing this business stuff largely when you’re talking about blogs and podcasts. You are already the expert. I remember one Fizzler a long time ago she’s like, “I’ve got 30+ years of post traumatic stress disorder working with clients. I’m just an expert in that and so I’m trying to bring that online to work less hours with the clients and make more revenue serving more people basically.”

There’s people like that that are coming with the expertise and then there’s people who just want to be entrepreneurs. Do you know what I mean? It’s a really tough battle I think in some ways for them, unless they can go full on newbie. Do you know what I mean? Think like an actual noob, listen to advice, and actually … I don’t know. Something about it is like … Everybody is a newbie about entrepreneurship, but really geeking out on your topic. Do you know what I mean?

Barrett: There are some instances though where the opposite happens where somebody comes in with the business expertise. They know the business. Derek Halpern comes to mind when he started Social Triggers. He’s done all of this ridiculous work and online tabloids basically or entertainment news.

Chase: Celebrity gossips.

Barrett: Celebrity gossip and then he turned that into … He leverages business expertise he had built and turned it into Social Triggers and built the expertise having already done the business stuff. It does go both ways.

Chase: Absolutely. It does not take long to be seen as an expert. Do you know what I mean? It really doesn’t.

Corbett: That’s where the choice of topic matters so much because for example, Chase, you have this burgeoning new business potential coming out which is reviewing bags. That’s not something …

Chase: All of my money was made a long time ago when I was doing reviews of Rickshaw bags and now I don’t make any money. I just get bags which is …

Corbett: Still, you could see the potential. Some of those videos get watched more than anything else that you make.

Chase: Yeah, more than anything else that that company has ever made.

Corbett: Right.

Chase: Do you know what I mean? Online.

Corbett: That’s not necessarily something that you would have to bring 10 years of experience to because you are the consumer. You’re not the manufacturing of them. There are topics like that that are either new or that for some reason don’t have a lot of experts in or require you to gain that expertise. They’re like hobbies. They’re geek topics. They’re things you geek out on. They’re like Pokemon. They’re Dungeons and Dragons. They’re Lord of the Rings.

Barrett: They’re TV shows.

Chase: They’re TV shows. There are actors and actresses. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there are still massive fans of that show that talk on forums.

Corbett: Cliff Ravenscraft, the Podcast Answer Man, he started out with a podcast that reviewed a TV show. He talked about it every week.

Barrett: Really?

Corbett: That’s how we got his start and it became really huge. The point there is that you have to, like you said, geek out on a specific topic and become the expert on that topic and then people will follow you. The issue is that what most people end up doing is they look inside themselves of what they want from their life and then they decide to make that the center of what they create which is either I want to change my life, I want to quit my business, I want to become an entrepreneur and so they start blogs about those things and they just become yet another me too voice.

Chase: If there’s one thing that I would see as a definite trend and something to watch for yourself, dear listener, is exactly that thing. Yes, you want to start a business. That doesn’t mean you need to start a blog about starting a business. You want to design your lifestyle. It doesn’t mean you need to start a lifestyle design blog. The thing that I’m always pumped about is when I hear someone who’s just like, “I’ve been into this thing for a while. I’ve been a Dungeon Master in my hometown for the last 10 years.” Like Steph’s husband. He’s a Dungeon Master. “I’m really good at it. People are always asking me for stuff about it so I started a little blog and it’s starting to gain some traction so I’m like what could I do with this?” That’s not expertise. That is that expertise. I love that.

Corbett: Another quick example here while we’re on it. A friend of mine in Seattle, he has this company called Hairball Audio. He was a typical garage musician and he did that for a long time, played in bands and stuff. At some point, he realized he was just a crappy musician, but he was pretty good at the audio stuff and figuring out the gear and he helped his friends and stuff work through this or whatever and eventually he started taking equipment apart and he went on to start selling DIY kits to create a compression component that fits in with your stack and it’s a huge business now. He quit his day job. He’s got three employees.

Chase: Some sort of compressor that’s on your …

Corbett: It’s like a kit with all the components not assembled together and you put it together.

Barrett: That’s so cool.

Corbett: It’s so cool.

Barrett: There are so many audio files and people who would be so into it.

Corbett: Again, that came from a hobby. It came from geeking out on something. It came from just trying to scratch your own itch.

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3. There are amazing businesses being made out there about unique topics. So easy to get jaded being in this business. (23:50) 95% of new sites are about passion or personal development or lifestyle design or something. But also there is so much more than a pyramid scheme here.

Barrett: Totally. It’s funny. Y’all went down the same thought process that I did which was that my next point here was that it’s so easy to get jaded being in this business where you start to feel like 90, 95, 99% of new sites are about finding your passion or personal development or blogging about blogging just like we were just talking about. That was my next one here, point number three. The flip side to that is we got this amazing opportunity to see so much more than that at Fizzle. Coming into a business like this or into a company like this, coming to work for you guys, it’s easy to think, “It’s going to be nothing but blogging about blogging or whatever.” So many of our customers or so many examples like the ones we’ve been talking about are so much more than that. They picked a topic that has nothing to do with personal development or nothing to do with building an online business. It was special to me. It was important to me to see that because that makes it real. It makes this business much more real to me when you see that it’s not just this pyramid scheme thing. We’re teaching real people to take what they know and what they love and turn it into revenue that supports their family. All those examples mean so much to me walking away from this thing.

Chase: Some of that came up from the 25 up and coming entrepreneurs last year. A lot of it’s come from the examples that we’ve shared on the podcast, even just this year. We talked about Adam with his coloring and posters for Advent and Easter and things like that. We talked about the woman who makes the dog beds that use human pillows.

Corbett: Cozy Cama. All of those examples are just so fun because you never would have thought of that business idea. It’s a lot of stuff that you would maybe see on something like Shark Tank, but these people are out there doing it on their own, finding a market on their own. They’re not going hat and hand to some investors selling their soul away. You can do it.

Barrett: One of my favorite ones was Courtney Sperlazza who was a scientist for a long time, has a PhD, and then they moved for her husband’s job. She homeschools her children. She was trying to find ways to teach her kids science through experiments and she couldn’t find any good experiment kits because she lived in a small town and then she had to run around all over the place to get the materials she needs. She goes to hardware stores, to Michael’s, and all over the town. She figured out, “If I’m having this problem, other homeschool moms are probably having this problem too and they’d like to help their kids do experiments and it’d be nice if this stuff just showed up,” and so she created a subscription box for science experiments for kids. It took off so much that she had to slow it down. She had to be like, “Okay, I can’t take any more new customers basically.”

Chase: I love that.

Barrett: I just love those kinds of stories. They’re so cool to me.

Chase: Yeah, that’s so cool. That’s awesome. It’s easy to get jaded in this business. What makes you jaded when you’re in this business? I’m trying to think through.

Corbett: One of the things that definitely can make you jaded over time is just this constant onslaught of new entrepreneurs, because we see a lot of them, who give you the same song and dance every time. I really want to do this thing. I’m really serious. I’m dedicated. I’ve been working on this idea, blah, blah, blah, and 90% of the time they never go anywhere. Life gets in the way or whatever, but it’s really easy to want something but it’s very hard to actually go through all the effort it takes to achieve it. People are giving up partly because we’re educating them on all the things that actually needs to happen for them to do it, but it can definitely jade you. I always try to be courteous to people when they come in and they’re excited about their idea and I try to give them a little bit of that back, but at the same time you can’t invest your heart and soul into every one of these business ideas on behalf of someone else anymore because you did a few times and then you saw somebody just fade and end up going away and never coming back again.

Barrett: You can see it happening. If you’re not seeing people hit small milestones along the way and they keep coming back with the same thing for too many cycles, you just know. It’s like, “I can see the wheels falling off here.” It’s so much easier for us to see it from this removed vantage point than it is for the entrepreneurs going through it. It’s so hard for them.

Chase: The thing that my video is that I … It’s out now. It’s happening now. It’s all at the same time. I’m living in two places at once. It’s about this idea of when we think we’re … I think this is systemic. A lot of us do this. We think we’re further along than we really are. We think we’re more advanced or more developed than we really are so it makes it really hard for us to actually go and take advice or actually go and … For instance, we can see where Gary Vaynerchuk is right now, but we don’t necessarily see the long path of him figuring out how to be himself, what the market wants, what’s valuable, what people want and all that stuff. When I get started, I need to start at that level. That’s where I need to start from. We don’t go and look like where is Gary V. five years or where was he when he started and then I’ll start there. That is such … I got to mention this. If you’ve your expert or a person that you’re like, “I would love to have a business like this,” you research, you find the original stuff that they published and you just focus on that. Where were they then?

You’ll probably see it’s not that great. You’ll probably see there’s some heart and soul in it. The only thing that matters is that they kept doing it. There was a little bit of traction that they kept doing it. I think that idea of not thinking you’re further along than you are, got the spice in the day of humble beginnings, do you know what I mean, and just caring enough to stick your neck out about this thing, that’s what makes you successful. You cared enough to stick your neck out. If you keep doing that, who knows how long until you’re doing stuff at whatever caliber, whatever taste that you wanted to. I think a lot of people are really bad at that, do you know what I mean? When someone’s saying, “This is what you should do,” you’re like, “Yeah, I know.”

Corbett: It’s hard to say, “Okay, I’ll spend five years doing that. I’ll be humble enough to say that’s where I need to start.”

Chase: Or even just like, “Okay, okay, okay.” My trick on this that I talk about in the video is for me personally, I want to get a little more involved politically. I want to be more active. I don’t know how. I don’t know what way, but I’m getting turned on about this. My little trick is this construct, the sentence that says, “It’s not like I’m going to be blank, but I can at least blank.” It’s not like I’m going to be Martin Luther King, but I can at least host a documentary night with some of my friends. Do you know what I mean? It’s not like I’m going to be …

Corbett: I thought you were going to say stand up for what you believe in.

Chase: No, but just a simple thing that that’s thinking small. It’s not like I’m going to be Gandhi, but I can at least … Insert the name of … I can at least make fliers and put them around the neighborhood. I can at least host a little rally thing. I can at least I don’t know what. I’m thinking small and I’m thinking local and I’m thinking tiny then I’m like, “Yeah, because I’m not trying to be Corbett Barr or Pat Flynn or Elizabeth Gilbert. I just care about this sort of thing and here’s a little way that I can contribute and building up from there.

Corbett: Like Mike.

Chase: No, that is different. Bo does know.

Barrett: It’s so hard not to think that that’s just where you skip straight to. It’s hard to imagine Barrack Obama knocking on doors in Chicago community organizing. You hear community organizing, it’s like this big thing. No. He went door to door and told people to come to a thing where they could get educated so that they can go vote. That’s not sexy. That’s community organizing? I don’t want to go knock on doors. That’s weird.

Chase: The only reason you do that is because you’re turned on enough by the thing. You’re not turned on by knocking on doors. You’re just turned on and like, “I want more people to know about this candidate or this idea.”

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4. All of the marketing hype in the world cannot fix a broken product. (37:48)

Barrett: My 5th one here was that all of the marketing hype in the world cannot fix a broken product. I think we’ve seen a lot of businesses where the problem is not in the marketing tactics. It’s not in the blog or the podcast that somebody is running. It’s in whatever it is they’re selling. They’re not actually selling a product or a service that solves a problem for their people, their customers and that’s as much a lesson about what marketing is and isn’t as it is about the product, I think. Marketing can be a great accelerator of a thing that’s already working, but it’s not going to fix an underlying problem in a product that doesn’t actually do what it says it does. I think if there’s a lesson there for me is that you have to start with a product that does the job. That doesn’t mean it has to be flashiest. We talk a lot about minimum viable products, but that minimum viable version of it has to work still. It still has to do the thing it says it does.

I don’t know if it was Mark Suster or Paul Graham. One of them wrote an article about how sometimes we’ve taken minimum viable product too far where you actually aren’t doing the thing you’re doing with the product. Your product has to do that thing. Only then, only once your product actually does the thing, should marketing actually start to work for you and that will really get the wheels turning. That’s been an interesting one to me to see that promotion, attention, praise, those things don’t make a business. A core product that actually serves the audience makes the business.

Chase: There are so many consequences to that lesson. You can have all the stars aligning and then you got the testimonials, you got the investors, things are going and it’s like, “Damn, this is going big,” and overnight a storm comes in and someone’s assets get freezed up and you’re just like, “You know what, actually I have to get rid of this whole company now because apparently nobody wants to invest in me anymore and now I can’t even staff the place.”

Corbett: I think that’s a separate issue. Maybe you built a house of cards. It’s not necessarily that your product isn’t good. It’s that you didn’t give your product a chance to breathe with …

Chase: Yeah, going too fast. In some ways, you need the investment to go too fast, but I think you’re right. We should make a distinction between … because what you’re talking about, Barrett, is a little more like, “I have this product that is okay. I need to learn how to do copywriting. I need to know how to make sales pages. I need to learn how to do Google Ad Words or something like that.” I would normally say, “Yes. I’ll give you three months to do whatever you can on that, make changes, A/B test, do the stuff, then come back,” because one of the next big pieces of growth for you to try out is improving the product, to what you were saying about the MVP, if the product isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do. That’s why I think the real skill of being an entrepreneur is only one thing and it’s just knowing who your audience is. It’s knowing what they care about, what they need, what the problem actually is. A good indie entrepreneur to me is someone who is already thinking of … They’re not thinking, “I need to make a product so I can make money.” They’re thinking, “People really need help with this thing in particular. I wonder if I can make something for that.”

Barrett: A great example of that that I love from our audience is Claire Pelletreau who we’ve talked about a number of times on the show and maybe people are tired of hearing about her, but she’s a great example because she started by doing Facebook ads for other people and then she realized she could get more leverage by creating a product to teach other people how to do their own Facebook ads. That solved the problem for some people. Some people were motivated enough and savvy enough with technology to be able to manage them themselves. What she started to realize was that what most people actually need and want is a person to do it for them, that they can work in conjunction with, not an information product. Claire realized, “I don’t have enough time to serve all the people that want me to do this for them and I don’t really enjoy it that much.”

She kept working on this problem and realized that, “Well, if I just train some people to become Facebook ad consultants, they could go serve all the people that want the service and then I make money off the people learning to be ad consultants. I help them create a business opportunity for themselves. All those clients who come to me, now I can point to people I’ve trained, that I trust and send them to them.” That’s become a great business for her. I just love that she really … One way to look at that is, “I’m just going to sell more. I’m going to convince more people that the solution is this information product.” She still sells it. It’s great. She knew that the real solution for most people was having a human to work with and she had that problem and solved that one too. I just love that.

Corbett: The way I like to look at this is I think of this as a continuum. There is product quality and the need that a product fills and then there’s marketing and marketing effectiveness. All businesses are on some sort of scale. At one end of the scale is let’s say a cure for cancer. You don’t need marketing for that because word is going to get out and spread like wildfire. On the other end of that spectrum is Trump University. All sales and marketing and no quality and you end up with a massive lawsuit on your hands because you defrauded people out of their money. The question is, which end of that spectrum do you want to be on and the closer you are to the other hand where your product is desperately needed, the less marketing that you have to do. The more you feel like you have to really rely on marketing probably you have some sort of a product quality issue or there’s a lot of competition. There are other factors that compound it. Marketing is really a multiplier of the quality of your product. If the quality of your product is zero, you can’t multiply it by anything.

Barrett: I’m a reader, not a mather so please don’t do the multiply thing.

Chase: These are really good, Barrett. These are awesome.

Barrett: I can probably come out with more, but I think those are the biggest ones that I could think of as themes that we saw across time. I think if people stuck to … If you address money for what it is, you need money to come into your business, figure out how much and then just know that that’s a thing.

Chase: That’s a journey to renegotiate how you feel and think about money is like a … That takes time. I don’t know what guru is out there doing that. Dave Ramsey is teaching how to save some money, but I’m talking about someone who can make me see the world as just money is not a moral at all. It doesn’t have a good. It doesn’t have a bad. There’s not too much there’s not too little. It is nothing, but you use it like you would use colors in the paint. I want to think about money that way so I can play with it and even as it’s also important to sustenance in some ways.

Barrett: Money is a thing. Second one is the more you can invest in building your own expertise, I think the better it’s going to make your business over time, related to the topic of your business. The third one is there are amazing businesses being built out there that are not blogs about blogs and are not personal development blogs. There are amazing people building businesses of all stripes. If you look hard enough, you can find a mentor or a role model for your business based on those. The fourth one, all the marketing hype in the world cannot fix a horrible product. Eventually the house of cards will come tumbling down. Fifth, I think a mission can be really powerful. A mission or a purpose or connecting to the sense of meaning or why behind why you’re doing what you’re doing in your business. It’s just a really, really powerful thing.

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5. Entrepreneurs with a mission are so much more potent than entrepreneurs just trying to make a buck. (31:50)

Barrett: That one came for me. That was my last one so I’ll come back to my 4th one, but my 5th one, you asked me for five, the 5th one was entrepreneurs with a mission are so much more potent than entrepreneurs who are just trying to make a buck. Back to the whole idea of, “I just want to make some money,” versus having a mission, having a problem that you are trying to solve can be so powerful because you come in instead of just, “I’m passionate about this, therefore that must be my business.” If you search for problems and make it your mission to solve a problem for people, a real problem, a real felt need, I think it can really change the way you approach things. It can change your business. It can change the future of the business and how successful it can be when you focus on a thing that needs solving. Getting activated around a cause, a political cause for example, you see a problem. You see things wrong in the political system that would make you want to contribute in some way.

Chase: I see injustice. I see indignity. I’m just like this shouldn’t be like that.

Barrett: Sometimes government has to solve things. Sometimes business has to. Sometimes nonprofits have to. There are plenty of problems that are marketable and that you can solve in a business way. I think if you come in with a mission to solve a problem, it can really, really change things from coming in with a me, me, me approach.

Corbett: You see this in big organizations all the time. The ones where all the employees seem to be flailing and not enjoying their jobs, they’re the ones that are just clearly profit driven and there’s nothing behind it. There’s no core philosophy behind the company. They have no guiding star. There’s no north star for them to know whether or not they’re doing the right thing. All they’re trying to do is try a bunch of shit and see which ones make money.

Chase: Melissa and I, we just got a new car. We just got a new car. We’re selling our other one and got a new one.

Corbett: You learn something every day.

Chase: Man, being in the car dealership, it’s brand new and we got a great deal on the whole thing, but it’s like dude these guys, whoa doggy. I’ve been a sales guy a couple times in my life and I know a lot about salesmanship because of my dad, because of Andy who is one of my close friends and just because of business. First of all, you got an organization like Toyota that’s so large, there are so many people along the way from that car being designed to when you drive it off the lot, just so many people involved to the point where at the very end it’s a sales guy going, “Let me talk to my manager about this for you.” We’re doing the dance and all that stuff and they barely work for Toyota at this point. They’re just barely there. The manager, he’s just got units to sell. I’m just looking around going, “Dude, it’s that damn movie.” The leads are bad. Why can’t I think of the name of the movie?

Corbett: Glengarry Glen Ross.

Chase: That movie is the most heart wrenching movie for me personally. It’s really bad. Bob and David did that whatever Mr. Show thing on Netflix. They did a little skit about salesman and it’s so dead on and horrible and dark and all of the things. Anyways, all I have to say, so much … For some reason, that was always really painful for me, really traumatic, the idea of not liking my job felt like such a prison that I couldn’t even cope which is why I turned into a little ballerina and trying to find fairy dust around every nick and corner.

Barrett: Which to me means you went searching for a mission you could believe in.

Chase: In some ways. Part of it is a feeling though. Part of it’s just a feeling of worth because I’ve resonated with the same thing, that mission thing. It’s night and day. When you talk to someone … It’s so rare, so rare that you talk to someone who’s like, “This just needs to change,” either they’re activist about that or they’re like, “I’m just really into Minecraft and making videos and I teach kids how to make Minecraft videos.” Whatever it is. They just see something almost, I don’t like using the word spiritual, but almost spiritual, almost more holistic than just …

Corbett: Maybe it doesn’t have to necessarily be like a mission. It just has to be some deep seated care for what you’re worried about.

Chase: Something that feels important. Do you know what I mean?

Barrett: It’s just like connecting to the meaning of it maybe. It doesn’t need to be a societal shift because of your business, but if you know why you’re doing what you’re doing basically, at the end of the day, the whole Simon Sinek thing, I think is pretty powerful. If you can connect to the purpose, the why, the …

Corbett: Just to put some meat on maybe why that is, one theory I think is that if you have two people who come to the table to Fizzle or somewhere else, who don’t have experience but want to be entrepreneurs, you have one who has some clear passion, they believe something needs to change in the world, and then you have another one who just needs to make money because they hate their job. When the going gets though, the question is, what’s going to keep you pushing through all the dips and hurdles and speed bumps and things that you’re going to hit along the way? It is possible that someone cares so much about the craft of entrepreneurship, that that could motivate them, we’ve seen that before.

Chase: Or care so much about not being poor or not being like dad or whatever.

Corbett: That can be enough, but more often than not, what we see is that somebody who just feels like they need to makes some money, they can live with the pain of their job and their life and whatnot and there’s nothing pulling them forward that’s like a deeper thing, the purpose or the care or whatever it is. In a lot of cases, if it’s just that you’re geeking out about something like bags or whatever, you’re going to do that whether or not you’re trying to make money from it. You’re continually making progress even though you don’t feel like you’re working on your business because you’re getting smarter and smarter about the thing that you sell.

Barrett: Yeah, 100%.

We appologize for any innacuracies in this transcript. We are still looking for a transcript vendor that can, let us say capture our unique way of doing things :)

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Show Notes:

25 Up-And-Coming Indie Entrepreneurs to Watch in 2015

23 Tips to Uncover What to do With Your Life (When You Have no Clue, FS096)

How To Design A Great Ebook Without Design Skills (+ 10 Ebook Page Templates For Your Book)

Barrett Brooks – Become a Courageous Leader

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Email Marketing: Test ideas for five types of email

Testing your email marketing can help power some pretty impressive results – like a 100% increase in clickthrough or a 114% boost in revenue.

But … let’s be real … it is harder to test your email than to just send a single version of the email idea you come up with.

One challenge with email marketing – to keep your customers clicking and coming back for more, you need to endlessly come up with new messages and ideas for every email you send or set in an automation platform.

However, when you test your email marketing, you don’t get to create just one email for each campaign, you now need an A and a B (and a C and a D … etc. … etc. … depending on how many treatments you have and your list size can support).

To give you some new hypothesis ideas for your next email test, I interviewed Mike Nelson, Co-founder and Head of Marketing, ReallyGoodEmails.com, in the MarketingSherpa Media Center (MarketingSherpa is the sister publishing brand to MarketingExperiments).

He brought examples of five key types of marketing email from his site, which is described as a “modern-day museum” full of emails.

 

You might also like

Email Preheaders Tested: The surprising sensitivity of a single line of text

Email Research: The 5 best email variables to test

Marketing Strategy: How you can use emails to test your value proposition

MECLABS Institute Email Messaging online course

 

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